Pearl in Hand

I must say the Blackberry Pearl is rather feature packed. I keep finding new options and settings about a dozen times a day! It’s like having a very small computer in your hands. I can do convenient things like Copy/Paste between programs. For example I was able to copy an address from an email message and paste it into the address book (contacts). And visa versa. I have copied info to and from browsers (I have more than one installed – more on that later). And being able to access other Apps while in one program is almost like using a ‘regular’ computer.

Just as an example of how ‘computer-like’ this is here’s what I Just did. No kidding. A friend of mine emailed me pictures of her family. The Pearl alerted me (I’ve set it up so a tone sounds everytime I get a message). I opened the email and clicked on the link which Then turned on the browser. It loaded the page with the pictures. Cute kid. Well, I wanted to reply that I saw the pictures. I returned to my friends’ email message and clicked ‘reply’. Wrote a short message and sent it off. However, it didn’t go through. I tried to resend…still no success. Oh, darn! I checked the email addresses and they looked correct. I tried Copying the message I wanted to originally send from one of my failed attempts then Pasted it in a new message. It still didn’t work. Then I realized that the SEND address I was using was not the email address of the phone, but instead my yahoo address. My friend had sent the message to my yahoo account. The Pearl can be set up to receive your email from several of your accounts. It makes things very convenient. You get all your mail no matter where you are. (Ok, so people familiar with Blackberry already know this, but it’s a new experience for me). So I decided to send my message back to my friend From the Pearl address. I went to a message that had the phone’s address copied it and then pasting that in my new message. It went through. YEAH! Being able to check the info I needed, navigate around the programs and copy/paste text, I easily solved my little problem.

And Just now, while I was checking the weather in Opera I just got an Alert tone which asked me if I wanted to open the Calendar. I clicked Yes and it showed the appointment I have later today. When I left the Calendar program I was returned back to the Opera page I was looking at. Very nice!

Since I’m on browsers let’s discuss that. The Pearl comes with a browser and with ‘t-zones’ which lets you access ringtones, wallpapers, songs, your account, FAQ’s and so on. The regular browser is actually not bad at all. It’s better than some other cell browsers I’ve had to endure. As I was checking out various sites I came across a PDF and the browser easily opened it. Very Nice! It’s easy to add bookmarks and navigate around. Like a normal browser you can control the size of the cache and clear it when you want. There’s options for security, JavaScript support and many other features. I found it easy to download and save wallpapers, songs and so on. Programs and games are, of course just saved in the phone, but the other stuff can be saved to the microSD memory card and you get to save it in the folder of your choice. I love that I can create a folder just like on my computer. It really annoys me when a device or OS assume I’m stupid and doesn’t let me do exactly what I want to do with my own data.

I was able to download Opera Mini 2.0, Opera mini 3 Beta, Google maps, and Yahoo Messenger from the Pearl browser with no trouble.

leave user name and password blank. Make sure there’s no extra space in any of the Fields. Although add a blank space in both username and password and that should do the trick.

As always when you start up Opera for the first time it asks to do a few tests. It only takes a moment and once over you can surf away. Now, the reason I also downloaded Opera Mini 3 Beta was because there’s issues with version 2.0 and the Pearl trackball. Clicking the trackball would result in going BACK a page. I was able to navigate once I got used to the idea, but it’s very unintuitive and annoying. Fortunately, the fine folks at Opera keep improving things so I downloaded Version 3 Beta that very day! The trackball issue is fixed and Opera Mini is the usual fine, fast and attractive browser I’ve been using on other phones as well as on my computer for years. Other Apps have a menu item to access other programs and I don’t have that in Opera but if another program is open I think I can go from my Opera to the other App just by clicking the Back button on the phone. I’m not completely sure about that yet, however. Still testing. well, It IS Beta. It’s great that when I come across a PDF while surfing on Opera, I get a message asking me if I want to start up the Pearl browser which will open the PDF. After i read the PDF I exit out of it and I am automatically returned to Opera. Very neatly done.

Next article I want to discuss the microSD card and how I used it, how typing works on the phone (Love it!!), Bluetooth pairing, using the Maps and Google Maps, getting videos to play on the phone and whatever else I can remember.

A talented and Emmy-winning digital special effects technician by trade, Cecilia has also made her mark over the years as a writer in video editing magazines. Her CV includes HBO’s "From the Earth to the Moon" and SciFi Channel’s "Frank Herbert's Dune" and "Children of Dune". The most recent Visual Effects work was done for an online film: "Eye of the Bennu". This project was notable for being the first film made entirely by people only communicating over the Internet. No one has ever actually met in person. A virtual film made by virtual people. Cecilia is currently making props for a short film project about a violent monk. Hmm.